This is a post that has been begging to be written for a week. I'm not sure I'm really able to do it "right" even now. I may not have achieved enough distance. This is, however, the calmest version I've been able to come up with. I still have the original, unexpurgated version(s), in Drafts.
My family--in case you haven't figured this out--is scattered. I am one of the fortunate few who lives within 50 miles of several adult family members: two nephews and a niece (and a nephew-in-law). My mom and oldest sister and brother-in-law live less than 10 miles from one another. Otherwise, we are all far enough away from each other to make "seeing family" a fairly Big Deal and an unusual occurrence.
Lots of people in the area where we live grew up here, have lived here the majority of their lives, and have family very close by. In our church, there are several families with three generations of members. One has four generations. I think that is kind of cool to be able to say about our church, but quite frankly it makes interpersonal stuff in our church a bit of a minefield. If you have a disagreement with one person, it can easily blow up into entrenched warfare. For the most part, it doesn't (that I'm aware of) because people do their best to stay out of each other's fights.
That's the background. Here's the rub: people who live near family have certain expectations of Family Time that those of use who don't live near extended family members do not have. On an intellectual level, I understand the concept of guarding Family Time jealously; I don't see my extended family often, and I don't always want to dilute that time with other stuff. What I have a hard time with is people who see their extended family virtually every day needing to do the same. I mean, didn't you just see Mom on Wednesday? Didn't you spend last weekend together with your sisters and their families? Don't you have dinner together every Friday night?
I can't decide if I envy this closeness, or if I just totally don't get it. Because someone whose ENTIRE FAMILY lives in the same zip code, someone who is a SAHM with three kids aged 3 to 8, someone whose husband works a non-traditional schedule (he's home some mornings, which means he works those evenings)....how can someone like this need to focus more on Family Time? There is no one sick in her extended family (yes, I'd know about anything huge: they are church members). The one big project for them right now is that her husband is opening his own business (he's actually establishing himself as owner in a business he already is in) in a few weeks, and that is quite stressful and busy in a way I have never experienced, so I understand that.
But here's the thing: she spends every day with her family. All day. Her husband works maybe 55 hours a week, right now. She has sisters who can babysit when she needs to help him out, her mom watches the kids regularly. And she continually, for the past several months, has told everyone who will listen how completely stressed she and her husband are, that there are too many things going on in her life, that this business change for him is financially scary, that she can't be involved with projects to the extent that she has been in the past until he gets settled in. Fine.
But at the same time, she continues to work on projects, committing the groups she's in charge of to future events. Until--BOOM!--she throws the partially-constructed mess into our laps, whereupon we find that not only is this a ticking bomb, but there are piles of goo in every direction, debris from unfinished and critically important year-old DUTIES that have not been handled. At all. "Oh, by the way, someone needs to take care of...." And she washes her hands of the whole thing, leaving us with the potential of disappointing the ENTIRE church, not to mention several young teenagers. Her excuse: She needs more Family Time.
The result is that the people she dropped this on have essentially no family time for the ensuing week. Not only that, but all three of the adults work over 30 hours a week. We all have children of our own whose schedules are rather more set in stone than the average 3- or 4-year-old. None of us has family in the area on whom we can call for help. Ever. For anything, from babysitting to stuffing envelopes to to driving under-16s hither and yon. Between the three of us, there are several cases of serious long-term illness in the extended families that could present us with the need to drop everything--for real--so we can go help out our family members in a real crisis. The kind of crisis that could end in long-term hospitalization or death, not a serious sleep-shortage due to a child with a cold, or having to move office furniture on a weekend (her apparent definitions of "crisis").
This would all be annoying enough to deal with at church, but Beast and I drive by her house every day, regardless of where we go. So there is the constant dread of seeing her and a) having to decide how to face her without taking her apart verbally; or b) having her flag us down to "mention" something else that she (ahem) never got around to, but "someone needs to do."
I have told people that I will NOT clean this up. Beast feels that there is a real need to get things organized, so he's been busting his hump this week--and not getting things done around our house that he wants to do, to his consternation (not mine, I couldn't care less what he does in that respect!). He is beyond frustrated. I am livid, even after a week. Part of my fury is with myself for allowing her to dupe me again, having already had experience with her M.O. previously.
So I'm left with trying to figure out why people do this. I strongly believe that everyone has a different level at which their lives equilibrate. Some can manage 38 individual activities and look graceful doing it; others barely manage three or four, but they do them well, consistent and reliable at every turn. However, I really don't understand this situation at all. Beast has ascribed it to this individual's need for drama, and no doubt there is some truth there. But, if that's all there is, then it just makes me want to smack her more, and harder, and it doesn't help me in trying to figure out how to deal with her (and others like her) in the future.
I do feel accountable to the teenagers, however. I love those high school kids, and disappointing them, walking out on them, is just not feasible. They buoy me whenever I'm with them, even when I see them struggling for answers, even when I know they don't even know what the questions are. What I receive from them is purely intangible but huge; I pray we three leaders are able to give back at least as much as we receive!
Frankly, if you aren't in something like this with your whole heart, you shouldn't be in it at all. So in the end, it's probably better that this other person walked away. Kids this age are notoriously good at spotting a fake, a hypocrite. And what kind of model is that to present to them anyway?
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